"Bickies?" He held out a tin of biscuits (i.e.,
a can of cookies). I took some.
"This Yank likes both. Thanks."
"Besides rainfall," Danny said, "we've got
to worry about this business of quotas. We're
not always allowed to produce all we can."
The quota problem has forced farmers to
look for other crops that aren't subject to
restrictions. Some have found one that seems
to have exciting possibilities. By pure luck I
met along the road the man who has done
most to produce and promote it in the Gerald
ton region: Stanley Peck, first president of the
Uni-Growers Association.
"That's white lupin," he said, pointing at
an area of unfamiliar herbage. "Also called
sweet lupin. Costs less to plant than wheat
and brings more per acre. It's 31 percent pro
tein, edible as a vegetable or in concentrates.
It's a legume, so it doesn't need nitrogen; it
puts nitrogen into the soil. And its stubble
carries more sheep than that of wheat."
"Sounds almost too good to be true," I said.
"Why is anyone growing anything else?"
"Ah, well, you see, this is new. We only
started with it a few years ago, we being
mostly English farmers-'Pommies,' they
call us-in this area. The fact is we Poms
aren't as conservative as the Aussies. And
lupin does have a few minor drawbacks. You
can't just keep planting it, or disease will
develop. You rotate it with other crops. Also,
your harvesting has to be spot-on or you'll
lose the lot: The seed pods tend to ripen and
open all at once. Production is still small, so
marketing isn't what it should be."
There's no marketing problem for Gerald
ton's marine harvest. Its crays-or rather,
their tails-go mostly to the United States.
"They're too pricey for Australia," said
Dick Matthews, manager of the Golden
Gleam fish company. "The whole catch here
is brought in by 385 boats. There won't be
more. The licenses are all taken. If you want
to fish, you've got to buy a boat that's already
licensed.
"Take an ordinary bloke with one ordinary
boat, say a 25-footer. He can get hold of
20,000 pounds of live crays, and we'll give
him $1.20 a pound. Even after taxes and
expenses he's got to net $8,000 a season.
"And it's not a bad life. The boys use fast
boats, 18 to 60 feet, and they're up before
dawn and home for lunch. We take their
catch, process it, deep-freeze it, and send it
south by refrigerated truck."
SOUTH IS THE DIRECTION in which
commerce flows, and Perth is the magnet.
The Western Australian capital-pretty,
fresh, affluent-need no longer feel neglected
by the eastern states; it has arrived with a
bang that has jolted the continent. If it is
distant from the eastern cities, it is by the
same token closer to new markets in Asia. It
is the lucky capital of the luckiest state in
one of the world's luckiest nations. Once
poor but proper, Perth is rich and getting
richer fast.
Yet it has known how to use its wealth
wisely. Instead of becoming a tinseled, un
harmonious urban center of conspicuous con
sumption, the city has expanded according to
a master plan. At its heart, mini-skyscrapers
of handsome design tower above bits of
gingerbread Victoriana in a manner that
somehow shows off both to best advantage.
Beyond the gleaming headquarters of
industry, old Perth spreads away into the
distance, a red-roofed expanse of suburbia.
In this, Perth is typically Australian: Aus
tralia, for all its vastness, must be the most
suburbanized country in the world. Every
man has his own home, however modest his
means, however pinched his plot.
Looking confidently toward a brilliant
future, Perth builds and plans throughways
to handle expanding traffic, and keeps its
foreshores clear to display its wonderful
Swan River for the benefit of all its citizens.
The Swan is one of Perth's great blessings,
and its way of using it (rather than abusing
it) says a lot about the city. Although indus
try has propelled the capital into world prom
inence, it is kept well out of town, where it
cannot pollute Perth's water or air.
Industry, which seemed to grow heavier
and headier even as I observed it, strives and
thrives and soils and stinks down at Kwinana,
on Cockburn Sound; commerce bustles profit
ably about the port of Fremantle. But Perth
stays bright and clean, its image reflected and
redoubled in the shining Swan.
The very southwesternmost corner of the
continent, with Perth itself and its ancillary
cities, contains three-quarters of Western
Australia's million souls. That pattern, so far
as the cities themselves are concerned, is
typically Australian and demographically
deplorable. In Western Australia it will soon
change, as the Pilbara becomes a great
industrial center, and keep on changing as,
in time, the Kimberley comes into its own.
National Geographic, February 1975
182